Papers by Molka Gharbaoui
2017 IEEE Conference on Network Softwarization (NetSoft)
In this paper, we present an experimental setup reproducing a convergent 5G service scenario span... more In this paper, we present an experimental setup reproducing a convergent 5G service scenario spanning over SDN-based Edge network, Cloud and IoT domains. To address reliability and robustness requirements of future 5G networks, the setup also includes an SDN orchestrator able to adaptively provision data delivery paths connecting service components running in those different domains. In particular, we demonstrate SDN orchestration capabilities in adapting data paths across IoT, Cloud and network domains based on the real-time load state of switches thereby recovering from congestions and assuring reliable data delivery services.
2021 IEEE 7th International Conference on Network Softwarization (NetSoft)
Vertical industries are attracted by the flexibility and customization offered by network operato... more Vertical industries are attracted by the flexibility and customization offered by network operators through network slicing to run their application platforms in virtual infrastructure assets tailored to their needs. On the other hand, in addition to the desired virtual capacity and component network functions into the slice, verticals may also want to specify connectivity and QoS slice requirements in abstract terms and without dealing with details of network service descriptors and technicalities of the underlying infrastructure.In this work, we propose an intent-based QoS-aware and SDN-enabled slicing implementation that allows customized specifications and establishment of network slices toward flexible delivery of vertical services. The aim is to simplify and automate the deployment of the network slices through a declarative approach while unburdening verticals to deal with technology-specific low-level networking directives. The paper focuses on the implementation of the intent layer using an ETSI NFV MANO platform and presents preliminary experimental results assessing the feasibility and effectiveness of our approach.
2018 IEEE Conference on Network Function Virtualization and Software Defined Networks (NFV-SDN), 2018
In this paper we report experimental validation of an orchestration system for geographically dis... more In this paper we report experimental validation of an orchestration system for geographically distributed Edge/NFV clouds, supporting end-to-end latency-aware and reliable network service chaining. The orchestration system includes advanced features such as dynamic virtual function selection and intent-based traffic steering control across heterogeneous SDN infrastructures. The experiment run under the 1st Open Call of the Fed4FIRE+ EU H2020 Project and took advantage of bare metal servers provided by the Fed4FIRE platform to set up a distributed SDN/NFV deployment. We provide details on how this orchestration system has been deployed on top of Fed4FIRE facility and present experimental results assessing the effectiveness of the proposed orchestration approach.
NOMS 2020 - 2020 IEEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium, 2020
From tenant (i.e., vertical) perspective, one of the attractive feature of network slices is the ... more From tenant (i.e., vertical) perspective, one of the attractive feature of network slices is the possibility to use SDN solutions, i.e., network programmability, to facilitate dynamic connectivity in the slice of the application software components in a flexible and scalable way. In this paper, we present an automated deployment of tenant-managed SDN network slices that allows network operators to enhance the service offerings, and tenants to benefit of in-built SDN capabilities. The SDN slice is built as a Network Service automatically deployed by Open Source MANO as a set of VNFs dynamically configured as SDN nodes (switches and controller) connecting tenant software components. We describe how to automatically and programmat-ically set-up SDN capabilities in the slice through the use of Juju Charms and provide some preliminary performance results.
2018 IEEE Conference on Network Function Virtualization and Software Defined Networks (NFV-SDN)
This paper will demonstrate an orchestration system for 5G infrastructure supporting latency-mini... more This paper will demonstrate an orchestration system for 5G infrastructure supporting latency-minimized and self-adaptive service chaining over geographically distributed edge clouds interconnected through SDN. The demo will show an orchestration system that comprises dynamic virtual function selection and intent-based traffic steering control functionalities to provide optimized service chains in terms of end-to-end latency and adjustable with respect to the context (e.g., service dynamics, network status).
2018 IEEE 29th Annual International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC)
The future 5G transport networks are envisioned to support a variety of vertical services through... more The future 5G transport networks are envisioned to support a variety of vertical services through network slicing and efficient orchestration over multiple administrative domains. In this paper, we propose an orchestrator architecture to support vertical services to meet their diverse resource and service requirements. We then present a system model for resource orchestration of transport networks as well as low-complexity algorithms that aim at minimizing service deployment cost and/or service latency. Importantly, the proposed model can work with any level of abstractions exposed by the underlying network or the federated domains depending on their representation of resources.
2021 Joint European Conference on Networks and Communications & 6G Summit (EuCNC/6G Summit)
Network slicing is well-recognized as a core 5G technology to enable heterogeneous vertical servi... more Network slicing is well-recognized as a core 5G technology to enable heterogeneous vertical services sharing the same infrastructure. In this context, the H2020 5Growth project extends baseline 5G management and orchestration platforms to manage the life-cycle of real end-to-end, reliable, and secure network slices with performance guarantees. In this paper, we present 5Growth's approaches to ($i$) attain isolation across network slices, (ii) provide secure interfaces towards third parties, and (iii) exploit AI/ML to achieve reliability through automated anomaly detection. In our quest towards validating full-fledged 5G pilots, we demonstrate our slicing mechanisms in PoCs that include interacting with ICT-17 infrastructure.
Photonic Network Communications
Network services in 5G will be rolled out as pools of virtual network functions (VNFs) exploiting... more Network services in 5G will be rolled out as pools of virtual network functions (VNFs) exploiting the advantages of both software-defined networking and network function virtualization. In this context, 5G network services are envisaged as ordered sequences of VNFs resulting in the so-called VNF Forwarding Graphs (VNFFGs). Such VNFs can be allocated over a number of distributed but interconnected data centers (DCs). In this work, a cloud/network orchestrator is discussed to dynamically process and accommodate VNFFG requests over a pool of DCs interconnected by a multi-layer (packet/flexi-grid optical) transport network infrastructure. Two different cloud and network resource allocation algorithms are proposed aiming at: (1) minimizing the distance between the selected DCs and (2) minimizing the load (i.e., consumed cloud resources) of the chosen DCs. In the performance evaluation, the proposed algorithms are experimentally validated and compared on the CTTC ADRENALINE testbed.
2017 European Conference on Networks and Communications (EuCNC), Jun 1, 2017
Future 5G networks will rely on the coordinated allocation of compute, storage, and networking re... more Future 5G networks will rely on the coordinated allocation of compute, storage, and networking resources in order to meet the functional requirements of 5G services as well as guaranteeing efficient usage of the network infrastructure. However, the 5G service provisioning paradigm will also require a unified infrastructure service market that integrates multiple operators and technologies. The 5G Exchange (5GEx) project, building heavily on the Software-Defined Network (SDN) and the Network Function Virtualization (NFV) functionalities, tries to overcome this market and technology fragmentation by designing, implementing, and testing a multi-domain orchestrator (MdO) prototype for fast and automated Network Service (NS) provisioning over multiple-technologies and spanning across multiple operators. This paper presents a first implementation of the 5GEx MdO prototype obtained by extending existing open source software tools at the disposal of the 5GEx partners. The main functions of the 5GEx MdO prototype are showcased by demonstrating how it is possible to create and deploy NSs in the context of a Slice as a Service (SlaaS) use-case, based on a multi-operator scenario. The 5GEx MdO prototype performance is experimentally evaluated running validation tests within the 5GEx sandbox. The overall time required for the NS deployment has been evaluated considering NSs deployed across two operators.
2018 20th International Conference on Transparent Optical Networks (ICTON), Jul 1, 2018
In this paper, we present latency-aware orchestration strategies that jointly consider satisfying... more In this paper, we present latency-aware orchestration strategies that jointly consider satisfying both the allocation of computing resources (in distributed DCs) and the bandwidth and latency networks requirements, which are experimentally evaluated within a Multi-Layer (Packet over Optical Flexi-Grid) Transport Network and considering different DC setups and capabilities.
NOMS 2018 - 2018 IEEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium, Apr 1, 2018
Supporting end-to-end network slices and services across operators has become an important use ca... more Supporting end-to-end network slices and services across operators has become an important use case of study for 5G networks as can be seen by 5G use cases published in 3GPP, ETSI as well as NGMN. This paper presents the in-depth architecture, implementation and experiments on a multi-domain orchestration framework that is able to deploy such multi-operator service as well as monitor the service for SLA compliance. Our implemented architecture allows operators to abstract their sensitive details while exposing the relevant amount of information to support inter-operator slice creation. Our experiments shows that the implemented framework is capable of creating services across operators while fulfilling the requirements of the network functions that form that service.
International Journal of Communication Systems
This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Condition... more This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions.
IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Inte... more This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). Created by The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for the benefit of humanity.
Optical Fiber Communication Conference, 2017
2016 IEEE NetSoft Conference and Workshops (NetSoft), 2016
This paper presents an SDN orchestrator that offers adaptive path provisioning in dynamic service... more This paper presents an SDN orchestrator that offers adaptive path provisioning in dynamic service chaining to recover from congestion events throughout service chain paths. Moreover, the SDN orchestrator exposes a Northbound interface based on REST principles and on the Intent-Based Network Modeling Language data model that allows applications to describe their requirements for the network (including dynamic service chaining) without being concerned with low-level implementation details. Experiments in an emulated network environment have been carried out to show the feasibility of the approach and to evaluate the effectiveness of the orchestration process in terms of network resource usage and adaptation overhead.
2016 IEEE NetSoft Conference and Workshops (NetSoft), 2016
Virtualization of network functions combined with the cloud paradigm enables the derealization of... more Virtualization of network functions combined with the cloud paradigm enables the derealization of mobile network functionalities in data-centers (DC). Such virtualized mobile network functions (MNF) can be then provisioned dynamically and flexibly, leading to more scalable and cost-effective mobile services. Although advantageous, the provisioning of mobile network functions imposes a significant burden on the DCs and on the transport network. Furthermore, derealization is expected to increase the latency. This paper focuses on the problem of provisioning on-demand resources in the DCs (storage/computational resources) and in the flexible optical network (network resources) interconnecting the DCs, in order to support MNFs. An orchestrator is proposed for handling the DC and network resources in a unified way. Two orchestration strategies targeting either the minimization of the latency or the blocking probability are presented and assessed through simulation. High performance improvement is achieved through the use of the unified orchestrator.
Computer Networks, 2016
The oversubscription of Data Center network links and the high volatility of Virtual Machine (VM)... more The oversubscription of Data Center network links and the high volatility of Virtual Machine (VM) deployments call for a flexible and agile control of Data Center networks, coordinated with computing resource control (i.e., cloud resource management). The Software-Defined Network (SDN) paradigm opens up new opportunities to design convergent resource management systems able to address the provisioning of cloud services while meeting dynamically changing traffic demands of running VMs.This paper presents the architectural design of an SDN-based orchestration system which is able to coordinate the provision of composite cloud and network services while assuring computational requirements as well as a better than best effort VM data delivery. The proposed orchestration system is able to perform VM allocations also based on estimations of switch/link and server loads as result of the synergistic interwork of the following functions: (i) resource selection and composition functions, (ii) coordinated resource configuration and management functions, (iii) monitoring and registration functions of resource status. A set of resource selection and composition strategies and estimation schemes have been also specified.The orchestration process has been thoroughly evaluated through a comprehensive set of simulations that clearly show an increasing acceptance rate of service requests, an improved utilization of network capabilities while effectively preventing significant degradations of the user experience despite the oversubscription of data center network links.
Computer Networks, 2016
In multi-domain backbone networks, the Path Computation Element (PCE) architecture provides effec... more In multi-domain backbone networks, the Path Computation Element (PCE) architecture provides effective traffic engineering while limiting the exposure of intra-domain information. However, returned path computations may still reveal confidential intra-domain information, if artfully correlated by a malicious PCE. In such cases, the cooperation among PCEs should consider not only the capability of providing feasible paths but also the likelihood of security breaches (e.g., confidentiality risk exposure). In fact, a PCE might have the interest to block a request if it is arriving from a malicious or a competitor provider. In this scenario, the PCEs cooperation could benefit from a trust management model that accounts for the quality of the past interactions in terms of security violations while avoiding abuse of path computation services.This work introduces the concepts of Trust Ranking and Quality of Interaction in PCE-based multi-domain backbone networks and elaborates a Bayes trust model to regulate the cooperation among PCEs. Specifically, the proposed trust management model aims at creating a common interest for the PCEs in contributing to effective traffic engineering while avoiding misuse of path computation services. Accordingly, we further propose a trust-aware PCE architecture and an incentive-compatible decision model that stimulate the behaviors of PCEs towards an effective cooperation.Simulation results show that the proposed trust model provides effective incentive-compatible service differentiation to collaborating domains and is effective in detecting malicious PCE behaviors thereby tuning the amount of information returned in the path computation replies.
2016 IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC), 2016
We present an SDN-based orchestration system that enables automated and coordinated arrangement o... more We present an SDN-based orchestration system that enables automated and coordinated arrangement of both computing and network resources in virtualized DC environments. The orchestrator is validated through a set of simulations, as well as through experiments carried out in a real laboratory. Results show that the proposed orchestration system improves the service requests acceptance rate and the utilization of network resources, while minimizing degradations of the user experience. Thus, DC resources can be effectively exploited, and different management objectives (e.g., load balancing, energy saving) can be reached.
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Papers by Molka Gharbaoui